Facebook, What They Know About You

After reading about the data breach at Facebook, I decided to do some research on what type of data Facebook collects. Some of the information they collect includes: where you live (or your current location), your age, gender, level of education, employment details, language, the type of device you use, income level, relationship status and details, life events, political engagement, shopping and buying behavior, the type of car you own, the bank you use, your TV and music interests, and more. But Facebook also collects data on your Facebook activity, any websites you visit while logged in on Facebook, in addition to websites you visit when not logged in on Facebook. Any page you look at that has a Facebook “like” icon on it is being tracked and you are being recorded as having looked at that page. Now that a lot of stuff for a company to know about you. But what really shocked me was when I downloaded the data file that Facebook has on me, There were recorded calls I made using Messenger.

Thats right!!. Facebook had recorded some of my calls. That’s some creepy stuff!! The data that Facebook had on me goes back 11 years. All the photo’s, text messages, post’s, Messenger calls and pages I visited. Now you know why it such a big deal and several governments want to talk to Facebook CEO Zuckerberg. The idea that this information is now in the hands of a third party without the consent of the owners is unconscionable and may be illegal. Facebook has done somethings to regain the trust of it users, such as rolling out a better privacy interface, where you don’t have to go searching thru a forest of menu’s to change or  delete a privacy setting. Its reworking it privacy statement to better inform users what type of data it collects and how it uses that data. Did it say anything about changing its behavior? Nope. Its still going to collect the same information, but it’s supposed to be giving users a cleaner experience at deleting or changing data you do not want Facebook to use. Should you delete your account? Well that’s up to you. Many of these social media platforms have the same privacy and terms of service agreements as Facebook. What makes this such a big deal is they let someone trick them out of the data and they didn’t even know it, until someone was doing a story on President Trump and decided to investigate a data farming business the president’s campaign was using. For all we know the other social platforms have had similar events and our data is out there anyway. First the Equifax breach, which affected 148 million people and now we can add Facebook’s 50 million with phone recordings. That’s a little bit better than half the US population. Still the promise of instant global communication out weighs the risks, whether it be organizing a national protest, communicating an injustice or just talking to friends on the other side of the world, its here to stay. We just have to be careful with what we put out there. To view your Facebook data and see what personal information they have, you can follow these steps. Depending on the amount of data they have, it may take some time. You will be sent a link when your information is ready to download. There are some security measures, which means you will have to know your Facebook password in order to download the information. It is also a zip file, so you will need an application that can open these types of files.

1. Click  at the top right of any Facebook page and select Settings.
2. Click Download a copy of your Facebook data below your General Account Settings.
3. Click Start My Archive.
4. You can check to see whether we have your credit card information stored by clicking Settings > Payments. From there, you may choose to change or delete stored credit card information.